MicroHorror

The cursor blinked on my computer screen, willing me to start, but my fingers remained idle. I’d taken a short lease on a cottage by Loch Fellie hoping for inspiration with my book. I rose from my desk and poured a second glass of single malt, a tacit admission of defeat. I looked through the window and beyond the swaying trees could see the loch, rain lashing hard upon its surface. There was a flash of lightening followed by the obligatory crack of thunder and, tossing a couple of logs onto the open fire, I thanked God I was not out on this foul night.

My third whisky was going down nicely when there was a knock on the front door. There were no local houses, apart from a second cottage on this same lane, so I was wary. I pulled a curtain back and couldn’t see a car–whoever it was had walked a long way through wretched weather to get here. I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better or worse. There was another louder knock and, probably because of the alcohol in my system, I opened the door.

An attractive girl, possibly only twenty, stood before me, her hair and coat soaked through. I could see how cold, how distressed she looked, so I ushered her in. She stood dripping in the hallway and started to explain, but I just took her soaked coat and directed her to my chair by the fire.

“Have a drink, it should warm you up,” I said, pushing a glass of Scotch into her hand.

“Thanks,” she said, and took a gulp. “I’m staying at the cottage down the lane, but the electric’s gone off. Do you have a phone I could use?”

“It’ll be the storm that’s affected the electric. But no phone, I’m afraid. I can’t get a signal. Look, let me get something to dry you with.” I went upstairs and got all the towels I could, including the dirty ones to mop up the puddles I’d seen around her feet.

I tended to the wet floor while my visitor dried her hair and wrapped herself in an enormous bath towel.

“Look, say ‘no’ if you want, but you can stay here. There’s a spare room if you…” I looked over to see how my proposal was being received, but she was staring into her glass, barely listening to me. I tried another tack.

“I’m a writer, you know, researching the ‘Lady in the Lake’ mystery from the 1960s. I hope to write a book on it one day, but to be honest it’s not going so well.”

“I’m not familiar with that story,” she said as yet more puddles appeared around her feet. She seemed to be only half listening, preferring to concentrate on the fire instead.

I pressed on, regardless of her apparent disinterest. “She was the wife of an ambitious lawyer who, it is said, was having an affair with her sister. One day he called the police to report her missing. Her badly decayed body was found in the lake three months later, hands and feet bound with twine. I hope to prove he was the murderer.”

I waited for a question, any question about my book, but there wasn’t one. I was not making the headway I’d hoped for, so tried a different approach. “Can I get you another drink? A dressing gown or another towel?” She looked up at me with empty eyes, her skin gray and her lips blue. Water trickled in rivulets off her hair onto her face, then into her lap. I couldn’t believe that anyone could get this wet walking just a hundred yards in the rain. I looked at the mess on the floor, and looked at her. “Good grief, woman,” I said, exasperated. “Will you never get dry?”

And then, at last realizing who she was, I fled from the cottage as though chased by the devil himself.

The road was little more than a mud track and the Jeep bucked back and forth as it negotiated the many ruts and holes in its path. It was Howard’s first time in South America; he usually preferred more temperate climes for his holidays, but he’d decided this was an invitation he could not refuse.

Howard’s day job was stem cell research, but his passion was marine biology–in particular, the myriad of life-forms the oceans support. He knew there were always new discoveries being made, but when friend and colleague Dr. Andre invited him to see mermaids at his facility in the Brazilian jungle, he laughed, thinking the language barrier was causing misunderstandings. But Dr. Andre was insistent and convinced his friend that his claims were genuine, that he was not delusional, and that the trip would be unforgettable.

The road was becoming barely passable when Howard finally reached the huge electrified gates of Andre’s compound. He took the card mailed to him and pushed it into the slot beneath a keypad on a stone gatepost. Noiselessly the gates swung open onto a roughly graveled path which wound through virgin forest as far as Howard could see. He had been warned that Andre’s facility was some miles from the gate and couldn’t help but wonder why he’d need such an isolated and inaccessible base–or such tight security.

As he drove on he became aware of a sweet smell in the air. He thought it might be from one of the rivers that meandered through the area, but gradually the odor grew to the point where the stench was so overpowering Howard could practically taste it. It reminded him of his days as a medical student, and the autopsies he’d attended.

He stopped his Jeep, pulling up under an impressive kapok tree to try and determine what it was he could smell. It was only with the engine off that he could hear, over the chirrup of cicadas and other jungle creatures, a deep buzzing sound. He shifted his position and moved his head and, judging the direction the noise came from, set off on foot through the choking undergrowth. Periodically he would stop and listen, then set off in a slightly different direction following the buzzing until he eventually came upon a clearing in the forest. It was roughly circular, about twenty feet in diameter. Within it were two concrete structures, each about five feet square with a padlocked wooden door in the front. This was clearly the source of the putrid stench and noise, for the buildings, and the air around them, were filled with clouds of countless black flies. With a forearm across his nose and mouth, Howard planted a hefty boot just below the lock of the door in the first bunker sending a sheet of flies from their resting place. The wood cracked, and with his second kick Howard had the door crashing open. A wave of warm, rank, air hit him in the face, practically knocking him to his knees. He staggered to the entrance and peered in but found it too dark to see anything clearly.

He knew his eyes would need time to adjust, so, holding his breath, he remained in the doorway as he grew accustomed to the low light. He tried to conserve his oxygen by remaining motionless, but couldn’t resist waving away the hundreds of flies that kept landing on his face, so it was only as his chest muscles were heaving in desperation, that he finally made out what the shapes in the bunker were–dolphins. There must have been a dozen in various stages of decay, all having had their lower body and tail surgically removed. Howard fell to the floor panting, finally understanding the secret of his friend, a respected surgeon, and his “mermaids.”

Howard looked over at the second bunker and, knowing what most likely lay inside, vomited.

“Go on; tell us the story about the family of hillbilly cannibals again–please!”

John groaned. “Not again! How many times have you heard it already?”

“Please.” The two children looked on with big eyes and expectant faces. John sighed with resignation.

“Sit down, then. Just once more, eh?”

The children took their places and John began.

“There was an English man backpacking through Australia who was hitching rides wherever he could. One day he ended up getting a ride in the back of a beat-up old station wagon. The next thing he knew he got bashed on the head, tied up and taken to an old shack somewhere in the Outback.”

The children had heard the tale before, but sat in silence, entranced.

“When he came round, he found that he was chained to an old metal bedstead. Solid iron it was, far too heavy for the man to move.”

The tension was getting too much for the children and they began to fidget, knowing the next part of the story well.

“That night a hillbilly, a mean, dirty old fellow, chopped the fellow’s foot right off! The man screamed and screamed like you wouldn’t believe, but it didn’t put the hillbilly off one bit. In fact he went and chopped off the other foot too! An old hag who lived in the shack wrapped his stumps in rotten old rags to stop the bleeding. Meanwhile the two feet were dropped in a pot of boiling water and left there till they were soft and tender, tender enough to eat!”

The children’s eyes were like saucers by now and the elder of the two, a girl of about ten, put a hand to her mouth.

“They didn’t?” she said.

“They did,” said John, “every last bit was eaten! They even threw the bones to their mangy dog!”

“What happened next?” asked the girl.

John was getting into his stride now as the story neared its climax.

“The hillbillies began to be a bit kinder to the English chap. Because he couldn’t run away without feet, they untied him. And every now and again they would even throw him some scraps of food. But none of that mattered to him; he missed his family and his legs hurt like you couldn’t imagine. He cried himself to sleep most nights. And then, about a month after they first captured him, the head hillbilly tied him up again. This time he chopped off a whole leg! You’ve never heard screaming like it, I promise you. That leg lasted the family about six weeks. Can you guess what happened next?”

“They chopped off his other leg?” whispered the girl.

“That’s right,” said John. “And they told him there and then, they were going to eat him bit by bit, feeding the whole family, until he was all gone!”

The girl looked at John in his wheelchair. “When is Daddy going to take your arm, then?”

“Next week, I think,” said John, maneuvering his wheelchair to the barred window.

“Goody gumdrops!” shouted the children in unison.

Tinkers had come to town with their crappy fair and even crappier rides. I’d had a wander round but got bored and went behind the sideshows to where they’d parked their lorries and other junk. I smashed a couple of windows ’cos no one could hear me over the music and threw stones at a couple of mangy dogs tied up by a caravan. Then I spotted a great wooden building right at the back of the park.

It had “Slide of Doom” written on it in faded paint, and as there was no one about, I thought I’d go in. I climbed some steps to the top of the slide and found there was even an old mat there almost waiting for me to use it. The slide looked pretty steep and it was plenty dark at the bottom but it was free, so I set off down it. I’ll tell you, I fair flew down that thing and really wanted another go, but then realized there were no stairs to climb back up. It was real dark towards the back of that building, but I knew that’s where the way out’d be, so I walked slowly over the straw ’n stuff trying to find it. Took me about ten minutes of feeling around in the dark, running my hand over the walls, before I found the door, a great heavy thing all bolted shut with a rusty padlock.

I ran back to the slide, feeling a bit panicky to be honest, and tried to climb it, but three steps up I’d slide down again. Even took my shoes off to try in bare feet, but that didn’t work either. I tried shouting but the walls were so thick, and I was so far from the fair, that I knew I’d never be heard.

I spent the next two hours on my knees in the dark scrabbling about in the straw for anything that might help me, you know, ropes or poles or summat. It was a huge great area to look around and if I’m honest I got pretty frightened, but you know in all that time I didn’t ever lose hope, never once did cry.

Well, not until I found someone else’s shoe, that is.

The ground opened up beneath me and I cascaded into a void, smashing into an unrelenting barrage of rocks that tore my skin and cracked my bones while I tumbled helplessly. The final insult was the snap of my ankles when I landed on a stone floor.

My legs were useless and to move just a fraction caused exquisite pain radiating from my feet to my pelvis. Panting, I lay in bewildered and blinded agony, wishing for death to take this unholy ordeal from me.

But I had survived.

I lay there for perhaps hours before I summoned the courage to stretch an arm to a pool of fetid water just feet beyond my grasp. Inch by inch and scream by scream I crossed the floor and got that foul water to my mouth, drinking it down in desperation, before vomiting it back to great waves of pain.

I was weeks in this pit before sufficient healing had taken place for me to sit upright. By now my wounds were black with stinking necrotic tissue, but my bones were stronger so I was able to walk again. There were birds and small mammals which I managed to trap and eat, keeping me alive in this private hell, but in the end nothing could prevent me from edging toward a tormented madness from which no mind could be expected to recover.

And then I woke to find it had all been a terrible dream.

But I had lived every day, every hour, every minute of that dream, feeling the pain and isolation as acutely as if I were awake. Even now, two weeks later, I keep breaking down, sobbing at the ordeal I’ve been through. Sometimes I begin to shake so terribly, so profoundly, that I think I’ll never stop.

Yet I can cope with all of that. What I truly can’t cope with is the thought that if not tonight, then one day, I will have to go to sleep again.

The cauldron simmered gently, suspended by a thick chain over the glowing coals of a small fire. A red-faced hag with lank grey hair stirred the steaming contents, chuckling quietly to herself as she grabbed a handful of the herbs she’d grown specially, and tossed them into the brew.

Surrounded by a myriad of ingredients, she paused to read a yellowing parchment by the light of a full moon, before selecting the next item, a rotten apple, which was duly plopped in.

The woman’s cat mewed and she looked up to see it playing in the box of pig’s ears. She simply hissed through blackened teeth, sending the animal fleeing from the room.

The hag picked up the partly chewed ear and lowered it into the pot along with a handful of chicken’s feet. Leaning forward, she sniffed the steam that rose from the cauldron, and frowned. She looked around at the ingredients to hand and smiled as her one good eye fell on a box of slimy leeks. Three went into the unholy brew followed by the lips of a long-dead cow and the brains of half a dozen rats.

With her wooden spoon the hag scooped up a portion of the liquid, brought it to her lips and tasted. She began coughing violently and immediately spat it back into the pot.

Dissatisfied, she scanned the room and spotted the cat again, this time playing amongst the sheep’s lungs. She shooed the animal once more and, choosing the organ it had been sitting on, lobbed it into the mix.

It was then the ringing started. The old crone stopped, pulled a mobile from her pocket and said as sweetly as possible, “Aunt Betty’s Handmade Sausages, how can I help?”

The trenches were abandoned now and the guns silent. All that was left were the bodies of men from both sides lying in the oozing mud, colored black by untold gallons of spilt blood. Some soldiers were barely out of the trenches when they were shot; others had run bravely into the hail of bullets that must have rung around their ears, before falling.

The courage of these young men was beyond my comprehension and, in truth, not my concern as I walked between the corpses that littered the ground. Mud stuck to my boots making progress difficult, and under normal circumstances I would have been far from such a scene of devastation–yesterday as the battle raged, I was hiding in the forest some five miles back–but today was too good an opportunity to miss. It was my chance to gather some trinkets.

I searched each body for anything I could sell. Some men only had cigarettes or chocolate in their pockets, but they were marketable products nonetheless. Others had envelopes which I opened hoping to find money, but usually they just contained letters or photographs that I just let fall into the quagmire beneath my feet.

Now and again a man would groan as I rifled his pockets, obviously not quite dead, but this did not deter me from my task. If they moaned too loudly, a boot to the face soon shut them up again.

To my left was a crater of sorts and I hoped there would be rich pickings from the men killed in the explosion that caused it. Slowly I squelched my way over to its rim and looked down. The morning mist stopped me from seeing just how deep it was, but I was able to see a flash of silver a few feet into the crater. It looked like a cigarette case and would be my greatest prize today if I could reach it.

Carefully I edged into the crater and immediately fell, getting a mouth full of mud as I did so. I tried to stand, but slipped again, sliding past my find. I dug in my feet and clawed the mud with both hands to stop myself sliding further down the steep side of the hole. I eventually steadied myself, but feared that to move just a fraction would send me careering deeper into the pit.

So, I began to call for help at the top of my voice until I was hoarse and tears streamed through the mud that caked my cheeks. It did no good; the place was deserted.

The cold gnawed at my bones and I knew I would have to do something, or perish. I could still only see mist below me, but assumed it would just be a few feet to the bottom, so released my grip and let myself slide down the inside of the crater.

At first I traveled slowly, but quickly picked up speed. I couldn’t believe I’d not reached the bottom and, fearing it would be too big a climb when I did, tried to stop myself again. But I was traveling too fast, the side too greasy and steep, and I just kept falling. Then I realized I was no longer in a hole, but plummeting into blackness, into a void.

I fell for what seemed an eternity before I realized with absolute terror where I must be going and the fate that would await me. And as I tumbled, one thought more than any troubled me.

How evil, how despicable, do you have to be, before you are taken to this place while still alive?

I’d worked in the morgue for two years, washing bodies, packing them and generally doing the work no one else wanted, when today, quite unexpectedly, I’d been asked to assist with the autopsy. I was nervous, especially because the doctor performing it was someone I’d never met from another hospital.

But he was pleased with the way I’d laid out the instruments and seemed a personable kind of guy, even asked me to call him Geoff.

Before he started, he picked up the paperwork and realized the shell of the man who lay on the gurney before us had once been a senior doctor himself.

“Says here he’s been a patient at this hospital ever since he had a breakdown of some sorts over thirty years ago. Any idea what happened to the poor chap?”

“Do you want the official version, or what’s supposed to have really happened?” I asked.

At that moment Geoff pulled back the sheet to reveal an emaciated man whose body was covered in burns and scars, the most noticeable being his missing fingers, three mutilated toes, and a ragged scar where his penis had once been.

Geoff gasped. “Bloody hell, what’s this? You’d better tell me what really happened.”

I passed Geoff the scalpel and he began his work, slicing into the grey wrinkled flesh while I mopped up the thick dark blood that oozed all over the cadaver before us.

“Apparently, he was working in Africa studying tropical medicine when it all went wrong–he was doing an autopsy on this local guy they’d had in an asylum for decades. It appears that when they took the top of his skull off, his head was full of tiny red worms all wriggling about. Like a bucket of live cotton threads!”

“That’s enough to send anyone a bit mad,” said Geoff, still working away with his blade, “but in all honesty I can’t really see it being true.”

“He was an experienced man,” I continued, “and he coped with that well, took it in his stride. No, that’s not what sent him mad.”

Geoff paused for a second. “So what did happen?”

“The doctor claimed that out of this writhing mass, a red fly emerged and flew straight into his face, stinging him viciously. He called it a Devil Fly. The villagers burned the corpse, so we’ll never know what really happened. By the time the doctor was flying back to Britain he was in a straitjacket ranting like a lunatic.”

Geoff lifted handfuls of stinking offal into a silver dish, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, but I’m not buying into the ‘Devil Fly’ theory for one second. What about all these scars? The fly cause those too?”

“He did those himself,” I said, scooping up a handful of crimson blood clots. “Would scream out in agony for days only to find peace when he bit off a finger. When he ran out, he started working on his toes!”

“And that?” said Geoff pointing to the groin area.

“He pushed a pencil up his urethra, left it there all day and impaired the circulation. It was black by the time staff spotted what he’d done. He’s the most disturbed patient this hospital has ever known–thirty years of total, utter torment.”

Geoff had removed the scalp and was now starting to saw through the top of the skull. He was looking paler, less confident. “I assume he’s had a scan? Dementia perhaps?”

“He would never stay still long enough for a scan, so no, he never had one.”

Geoff cut the power to the saw. I could see he was practically through the bone now. His hand trembled a little.

“Wow, quite a tale you have there.” He tried to smile. “Best finish off here though, eh?”

Geoff sent his saw into the bone again with renewed determination while I just wondered what a red piece of cotton was doing on our sterile floor.

“I’m so glad you could come; Mum’s been feeling dreadful all day. She’s in the front.”

The doctor, wearing a dinner jacket and obviously en route to somewhere more salubrious than a tiny terraced home, carried his black bag through with him.

“Look, I’m sorry, I’m really going to have to go; the children have been with a neighbor all afternoon and…”

The doctor nodded sympathetically and turned his attention to Annie, who was still in her nightclothes. As doors slammed behind him, he knelt beside her, smiling his reassuring smile.“Now, Annie, what’s to do?” he asked, as he instinctively put two fingers to her thin wrist.

“It’s just that I’ve no energy, and when I try and stand I go all dizzy. And I’m off my food.”

“Tongue.”

Annie dutifully pulled out a coated tongue while the doctor placed the back of his hand to her forehead. “Well, you’ve not got a temperature,” he said as he reached for his stethoscope. “I’m just going to open your nightie now; this might be cold.” Carefully he placed the silver disc underneath a wizened breast and, holding it in place with two fingers, listened.

“I really appreciate you coming so quickly like this, Doctor. I hate to call you out, but I’ve been worried and I’m so frightened of having to go into hospital.”

For the first time the doctor stopped his examination, actually looked Annie in the eye, and placed a gentle hand on her arm. “You’ve no need to worry, it won’t come to that. You’ve just a little anemic, nothing a vitamin injection can’t put right.”

The doctor pulled the nightie together, covering Annie’s chest, and then began to rummage in his bag, pulling out a syringe and glass phial, which he snapped the top off in one quick movement.

Annie watched as the liquid was sucked into the syringe. “You are looking smart tonight, Doctor.”

“I was just off out for a meal with my wife when the call came through.” He lifted her arm from under the blanket and held it straight, before applying a tourniquet and then swabbing the most prominent vein to pop up with an alcohol swab. “Now I hope you don’t mind needles. Sharp scratch.”

“I’m sorry to have spoiled your meal, Doctor. Will your wife be very angry?”

“No, I shouldn’t imagine so, Annie; she is very understanding. I, however,” he continued, as he plunged the liquid into her vein, “am mightily pissed off.”

Meadow Hill is home to twenty-seven ladies and gentlemen, all of whom have advanced dementia. And that is were I work nights.

We give out the medication and help them to bed, and usually they sleep well.

But every now and again they won’t.

Some will cry quietly, others shriek, but all will have a terrified look in their eyes that I can’t begin to describe.

When this happens we don’t know what to do and just increase their medication. But it never helps.

And the next morning one will always be dead.

It happened again last night. But this time, in the darkest shadows, I saw something move…